Help Pages

African American Genealogy Research - Bibliography of resources for researching African American genealogy, including beginner's guides, guidebooks, case studies, and bibliographies. African American Family Histories and Related Works in the Library of Congress is also available by navigating up a level on this website to Bibliographies & Guides. From the Library of Congress, Humanities and Social Sciences Division. (LII)

African American Research - Overview of the resources of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for researching African American genealogy (LII)

Census Tools - has several Excel spreadsheets available for free download. (RB)

Arizona Genealogy Resource - The State of Arizona's Department of Health Services, Arizona State Library, and the Mesa Family History Library have teamed up to provide a database of more than 400,000 images of birth certificates (between 1887 and 1928) and death certificates (between 1878 and 1953) (RB)

Find My Past - a database featuring BT27 Outward Passenger Lists for long-distance voyages leaving the British Isles from 1960 right back to 1890. You can search by name, destination, and more. Passenger list images can be downloaded too. (LIB)

South Dakota Cemetery Record Search - This searchable database includes records that were cataloged as part of the WPA Cemetery Project (pre-1940s) plus any cemetery updates that our office has received. It is not a complete listing of all the burials in South Dakota.

ChicagoAncestors - The quest to document one's family tree is one that stretches back across the human experience, and it can be done through the use of government records, obituaries, and so on. Recently, the Newberry Library in Chicago created this site for persons looking to trace their roots within the Windy City. First-time visitors to the site can just go ahead and type in a street address or browse through the online collections which are culled from a variety of local institutions. In the Tools area, visitors will find address conversion tools, Chicago City Directory street guides, and a tutorial on researching Chicago in the period before the fire of 1871. Visitors also have the opportunity to add content information to this interactive resource, which it should be noted is open source. (SR)

FamilySearch - from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, one of the best genealogical sites on the web.

Family Tree Searcher - Enter your ancestor data just once to search for family trees at multiple web sites.

The Official Federal Land Patent Records Site - access to Federal land conveyance records for the Public Land States. [There is] also image access to more than two million Federal land title records for Eastern Public Land States, issued between 1820 and 1908. (LII)

Genealogy Today.com - divided into several broad sections, including Getting Started, Family History, and Research Tools. (SR)

Scottish Emigration Database - examine the records of over 21,000 passengers who embarked at Glasgow and Greenock for other ports. While the database only covers a small time period, the database is well-designed for general use. First-time visitors should take a look at the “User Guide”, which includes details about the different fields used in each record, such as “occupation”, “urban district/village”, and “destination port”. (SR)

Missouri World War I Records - This database contains over 145,000 cards of Army and Marine personnel from Missouri between 1917 and 1919. (There are plans to add the records of over 18,000 Navy personnel.) (RB)

National Archives and Records Administration : Access to Archival Databases - over 5.2 million records of passengers who arrived at the ports of Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia in the 19th century. These records were transcribed from original ship manifests into databases by Temple University's Center for Immigration Research and donated to NARA. (FGI)

The Cleveland Necrology File - produced from a microfilmed copy of an alphabetical card file containing local cemetery records and newspaper death notices gathered by the staff of the Cleveland Public Library. The database includes paid death notices published in the following newspapers:* The Cleveland Plain Dealer - 1850-1975* The Cleveland Herald - 1833, 1847-1848, 1876, 1878-1879* The Cleveland Press - 1941-1975 . For more recent obits, go to the same site and follow the directions.

Oregon State Archives: Genealogy Records - Resources include a guide to Oregon county records (which contains a comprehensive descriptive inventory of selected records for each of Oregon's 36 counties), a searchable selection of hundreds of thousands of vital statistics records, a guide to provisional and territorial records, and topical research aids. (LII)